World’s biggest dark matter detector spots a single weird particle - Science | AAAS

Startups that promise to predict how humans will behave are having a moment. Over the past year, Simile raised $200 million at a $2 billion valuation; Aaru raised $88 million at a $1 billion valuation; and Humans&, an AI startup that announced a massive $480 million seed round in January at a $4.48 billion valuation, launched Persimmon to model human behavior. The status quo for human behavior prediction today relies heavily on large language models (LLMs) that are prompted or fine-tuned to role-play as a target demographic. But two-year-old, San Francisco-based Mirror Particle thinks that approach is fundamentally broken.

Here at Physics World we have had some luck with predicting who is going to win a Nobel Prize in Physics. One successful strategy is to identify top physicists and just keep predicting that they will win – and eventually they do! For example, we picked Anton Zeilinger for the 2009, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2019 prizes – and he won in 2022. Clearly, it was a mistake to give up on him in 2020.

(Screengrab from footage shared on social media)Apple's iPhone 18 smartphones are being advertised in Tehran at unusually low prices as “war booty”, with sellers claiming the devices were recovered from a cargo ship that sank near the Strait of Hormuz, Iran International reported on Saturday. The advertisements surfaced after a container ship reportedly sank near the strategic waterway on October 13. Videos circulating on social media purportedly showed shipping containers floating in the sea, with iPhones and expensive perfumes scattered in the water as people aboard small boats collected the goods. According to a report by Ynet News, footage circulated by media outlets across the Arab world on Thursday evening showed people retrieving objects from the water. One boat appeared to be carrying boxes of iPhones, with one report claiming that the devices were Apple's latest iPhone 18 models. The identities of those seen collecting the goods remain unclear. There has been no official confirmation of the incident. Iran's cyber police have warned prospective buyers against paying deposits or advance fees before inspecting the products and verifying sellers' identities.

Israeli settlers have attacked European diplomats, including a French mayor, near the Palestinian village of Taybeh in the occupied West Bank. The delegation was visiting Palestinian olive harvesters on Saturday when the Israeli attackers confronted the group. The attack comes a day after settlers assaulted a US journalist north of Ramallah. In Saturday’s incident, the settlers targeted Belgium’s consul general, French and Polish diplomats and Catholic representatives, Belgian Foreign Minister Maxime Prevot said. “A French mayor was assaulted and a Belgian vehicle damaged,” Prevot said, linking the attack to what he called Israel’s “illegal settlement policy” and pledging to push for further European Union sanctions. French mayor Bernard Baudoux, who was assaulted, told the AFP news agency that the violence suggests that “there is a tolerance on the part of the Israeli government” towards settler violence. Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh, reporting from Ramallah, said the settlers surrounded the diplomats’ vehicles, pelted them with stones and smashed their windows.